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String Quartet No 5, Sz102

Introduction

The Fifth Quartet (1934) came six years after the Fourth. It was written in a month (6 August – 6 September), and followed the revivifying effect the composition of the 44 Duos for two violins had had upon his art in thematic as opposed to intervallic transformation and – an inherent feature of the quartet as a medium, not often used by Bartók before – the juxtaposition of slow and fast music. While the Fourth Quartet is in an almost hidden C major, the B flat tonality of the Fifth is more apparent. The hectic cross-rhythms which ended No 4 stretched syncopation to the limit but remained throughout in 2/4, yet in the Fifth Quartet’s opening movement the pulse is not fixed – the ‘syncopation’ of the first idea cannot be heard against an underlying pulse, for there is none. When this theme is used as the basis for a fugato in the finale, an example of Bartók’s cross-thematicism, we then experience the syncopation at high speed. Taking external features from No 4, the Fifth Quartet is also in five movements, but the slow movements surround a central, folk-inspired Scherzo. The textural aspects of the slow movements faintly echo the corresponding ones in the Fourth, and are also found in the Trio of the Scherzo.